Progress 09/15/23 to 09/14/24
Outputs
Target Audience:Enhanced Diversity Through Strategic Recruitment To further diversify participation in our Growing Urban Farmers program at Hope Farms, we implemented a two-pronged recruitment approach: We maintained our neighborhood-centered outreach initiatives while developing advocacy-centered recruitment tactics that activated Hope Farms' existing customer base--individual consumers and chef partners--as program ambassadors among local food activists and enthusiasts. We conducted targeted focus groups with participants representing diverse backgrounds directly relevant to our expansion goals, including aspiring homesteaders, mid-career professionals seeking change, small business owners interested in herbal product development, and existing small-scale market growers. This research-informed approach enabled us to craft more effective messaging that resonates with our target demographics and addresses their specific motivations for pursuing agricultural training. Distinctive Program Advantages Our multi-channel outreach campaign successfully highlighted the program's unique value proposition: Gulf Coast-Specific Training: We offer immersive, hands-on education tailored explicitly to micro-farming projects in the challenging Gulf Coast growing conditions--knowledge not readily available through traditional agricultural education channels. Comprehensive Expert Network: Participants gain direct access to a diverse network of subject matter experts spanning the entire agricultural value chain, from soil science to market development. Innovative Community-of-Practice Model: Our structured mentorship program connects trainees with established farmers, while regular knowledge-sharing gatherings bring together current students, program alumni, agricultural educators, community stakeholders, master farmers, food retailers, and culinary professionals--creating an ecosystem of support that extends well beyond formal training. This integrated approach has created a supportive infrastructure that nurtures new farmers throughout their development journey while strengthening regional food system resilience. We achieved significant progress toward our overarching goal of increasing the number of economically + environmentally sustainable urban farms operated by socially disadvantaged farmers in Houston and Gulf Coast communities. Through strategic implementation, we: 1. Expanded Recruitment of Underrepresented Farmers: successfully broadened our outreach to bring more BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) + female participants into Hope Farms' programs through targeted marketing efforts including social media campaigns, print materials distributed at strategic locations, content marketing with SEO optimization, + earned media coverage including a feature in Texas Monthly. 2. Reduced Financial Barriers: provided full scholarships to 25 BIPOC individuals for our comprehensive 12-week program and dozens more partial scholarships for Master Classes. We established Hope Farms as a Serve Houston AmeriCorps service site, enabling seven additional individuals to participate while receiving living stipends. 3. Increased Training Accessibility: initiated development of an online component of Hope Farms' Gulf Coast-focused farmer training curriculum, beginning with high-quality video production and content codification. We launched our first digital offering through our 12-hour Farm Business Master Class delivered via weekly webinars, creating an accessible entry point for participants with scheduling constraints. 4. Built Social Capital: successfully incubated a collegial, peer-to-peer network of urban farmers through our Farmer Friday events, attracting greater participation through strategic partnerships with complementary food advocacy organizations. These gatherings strengthened the regional food system network while enhancing learning opportunities for our participants. Changes/Problems:Our commitment to responsive program management revealed an unanticipated need for formalized post-graduation advancement opportunities. As graduates completed the 12-week intensive program, many expressed strong interest in continuing their agricultural development journey within our supportive ecosystem. In response to this identified need, we developed two complementary pathways: · Progressive Professional Development Pipeline: We established a structured advancement track for high-performing graduates, beginning with internships that can evolve into paid fellowships as farm operations and funding permit. This creates a continuous learning pathway while addressing operational needs at Hope Farms. · Entrepreneurial Incubator Expansion: We prioritized the expansion of our incubator program, enabling motivated graduates to transition their training spaces into functional micro-businesses. Through an innovative workshare arrangement, these emerging entrepreneurs lease Hope Farms land without upfront financial obligations, selling their products through our established farmers market as "Food from Friends" vendors--creating a low-risk entry point to agricultural entrepreneurship. This organic evolution of our program demonstrates both our responsiveness to participant needs and our commitment to creating sustainable agricultural career pathways for socially disadvantaged farmers. While our program demonstrated significant success, we identified several opportunities for continued improvement: · Transportation Accessibility: A recurring challenge for many participants was reliable transportation access. Many relied on public transit, walking, or bicycling, which occasionally impacted punctuality and attendance, particularly for offsite learning experiences at partner facilities. To address this barrier, we are implementing two complementary solutions: o Incorporating transportation subsidies (bus passes) into scholarship packages for qualifying participants o Securing passenger van rental for coordinated offsite field trips to ensure all participants can access valuable learning opportunities regardless of personal transportation limitations · Digital Learning Acceleration: While we've made significant progress in developing our online curriculum, accelerating this initiative remains a priority to expand program accessibility for those unable to participate in in-person training due to geographic or scheduling constraints. · Enhanced Post-Graduation Support: Building on our unexpected finding regarding post-graduation pathways, we plan to further formalize and expand our incubator program and professional development pipeline to create clear, accessible advancement opportunities for program graduates. These insights and enhancement opportunities demonstrate our commitment to continuous improvement and responsive program management--ensuring that Hope Farms' Growing Urban Farmers program continues to effectively address barriers to entry while developing a diverse, skilled, and successful urban farming community throughout the Gulf Coast region. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Robust participation metrics + post-program outcomes demonstrate the effectiveness of our refined approach: Pre-Training Engagement: Hosted 75 prospective student visits to Hope Farms for orientation sessions before the start of Fall '23 + Spring '24 cohorts, creating a pipeline of informed potential participants. Fall 2023 Cohort Achievements: 14-person cohort achieved significant post-graduation outcomes: 2 graduates launched a commercial mushroom-growing operation, 4 established small-scale market gardens on personal property w/ neighborhood sales, 3 transitioned to paid internships at Hope Farms, 2secured employment w/ established farming operations, 9 continued their agricultural education through our Master Classes in Business, 3redirected their career focus to nutrition + public health, contributing to the broader food system in complementary roles Spring '24 Cohort Results: 11-person cohort demonstrated diversified outcomes: 3 secured paid internships at Hope Farms, 2 established businesses selling value-added products created from self-grown produce + herbs, 4 developed small-scale vegetable production for personal consumption + neighborhood sales, 1 registered for our business incubation program, maintaining a growing area at Hope Farms, + participating in our Sat. markets. Summer Intensive Impact: 6 participants in our specialized summer program for college students gained a comprehensive understanding of urban farming operations. 2 committed to pursuing urban farming careers upon graduation, + 4 integrated urban agriculture concepts into their professional development in urban planning + public health. Broader Community Engagement: Expanded Master Class offerings attracted significant participation from individuals unable to commit to the complete intensive program, extending our educational reach to a wider audience. 119 students participated in our monthly Master Classes. They gained expanded knowledge in: 2-season Tomato production, Growing peppers, Pollinator gardening, Poultry management, Companion planting, Natural pest control, Composting, Cut flower cultivation, Vermiculture, Regenerative agriculture, Rainwater harvesting, Apiary management Knowledge-Sharing Networks: Hosted 2 major farmer gatherings: Oct. '23 event brought together 50 urban farming enthusiasts to discuss season extension strategies + connect to regional resources May '24 gathering focused on advanced tomato production techniques for Gulf Coast conditions, attracting 35 small producers and farming enthusiasts Program Delivery and Participant Engagement Comprehensive training model employed multiple educational formats to maximize accessibility while maintaining rigorous agricultural standards: Intensive Cohort Training Successfully delivered our flagship Growing Urban Farmers program through 3 distinct cohorts: · Fall & Spring 12-Week Intensives: 2 comprehensive cohorts engaged participants in immersive agricultural education Monday-Friday from 9:00a to 1:00p. This structured approach balanced formal classroom instruction on critical topics--soil health management, strategic crop planning, value-added product development--w/ extensive field work that allowed participants to immediately apply theoretical knowledge. · Specialized Summer Intensive: implemented a condensed summer program specifically designed for college students pursuing related degrees, creating a pipeline for future urban agriculture professionals while accommodating academic schedules. To ensure measurable skill acquisition + provide tangible experience, ea. participant managed their own dedicated growing row throughout the program. This personalized learning laboratory enabled participants to demonstrate comprehensive agricultural competency from soil preparation through harvest--providing both educational benefits and tangible outcomes that could be showcased to potential employers or customers. Specialized Knowledge Development Beyond the core program, we expanded educational access through: · Diversified Master Classes: delivered 14 specialized Master Classes addressing high-demand agricultural topics. 13 were conducted through hands-on instruction at Hope Farms, while our Business Master Class employed a virtual delivery model to enhance accessibility. · Advanced Apprenticeship Program: Significantly expanded our internship + apprenticeship offerings, providing intensive mentored training to 8 apprentices + interns during winter and summer sessions. These extended engagement opportunities created a pathway for accelerated professional development + deeper agricultural expertise. This multi-faceted delivery approach ensured program accessibility for participants at various stages of agricultural interest and commitment, while maintaining the hands-on, experiential learning that distinguishes our program. By finding a balance between hands-on work experience + formal content delivery, students developed the skills they were learning by expanding their knowledge + understanding of concepts. Written assignments + assessments helped reinforce + solidify the experiential learning that occurs alongside the farm team, which is often dynamic + unpredictable due to factors like weather, pests, + infrastructure issues such as damaged irrigation. Through rigorous evaluation + participant feedback, we identified several critical success factors: · Balanced Learning Methodology: integrated approach balancing hands-on experiential learning w/ structured content delivery proved exceptionally effective. This dual modality enabled participants to immediately apply theoretical knowledge in practical settings, reinforcing learning through tangible outcomes. · Formalized Knowledge Assessment: Written assignments + structured assessments significantly enhanced knowledge retention by reinforcing experiential learning. This formal component proved particularly valuable in helping participants navigate the unpredictable variables inherent in agricultural pursuits--weather fluctuations, pest pressures, + infrastructure challenges such as irrigation malfunctions. · Cohort-Based Community: The cohort model fostered a collaborative learning environment where participants supported each other through challenges while developing the professional relationships essential for long-term success in agriculture. · Adaptive Programming: willingness to adjust schedules, content delivery methods, + program structure in response to participant feedback created a responsive learning environment that accommodated diverse learning styles and life circumstances. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue to operating the program to the standards and with the processes we have established to be succesful. Further, we plan to address areas identified in the "Change Problems" section accordingly.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Our second year of NIFA-funded initiatives yielded substantial achievements in expanding the reach and impact of our Growing Urban Farmers program. Building upon our well-developed curriculum and experiential learning framework, we've strategically refined our communication and engagement methods to effectively serve a diverse group of aspiring farmers in the Gulf Coast region. Understanding that transformative agricultural change requires addressing systemic barriers that have historically limited entry for underrepresented groups, we implemented targeted strategies to create more equitable access, while also reaching out to non-traditional students from across the socio-economic spectrum. Central to our approach is the conviction that sustainable community food systems thrive when farmers reflect and understand the broader community--a principle guiding all aspects of our program development and outreach. Our communication strategy leveraged established networks and new channels, yielding powerful results from word-of-mouth referrals and earned media coverage. This organic growth demonstrates the program's increasing reputation and perceived value within the regional agricultural community and the community as a whole. Through rigorous ongoing evaluation and responsive program management, we've implemented several key adjustments that have significantly enhanced program effectiveness: Seasonally Optimized Scheduling: Analysis of student feedback and interest patterns revealed minimal demand for outdoor learning during extreme weather months. In response, we redesigned our calendar to offer the 12-week Growing Urban Farmers Intensives and field-based Master Classes in Agriculture during spring and fall seasons, while scheduling indoor and virtual Master Classes--including the entire Business Track and select electives--during winter and summer months. Summer Intensive Track: We developed and successfully implemented a condensed summer program specifically targeting college students pursuing degrees in agriculture, public health, and urban planning, creating a pipeline for future urban agriculture professionals. Expanded Short-Course Options: Recognizing significant interest from individuals unable to commit to the full intensive program, we increased opportunities for specialized one-day Master Classes and virtual learning experiences in high-demand topics, including Tomato Growing, Goat Management, Poultry Operations, Preserve the Harvest, Season Extension, and Pest Management. These adaptations have allowed us to maintain rigorous educational standards while significantly increasing program accessibility and reaching a broader audience of potential urban farmers. Strategic Marketing and Media Outreach To drive targeted program awareness, we executed a comprehensive multi-channel marketing strategy that significantly amplified our reach to diverse agricultural stakeholders: · Sustained Digital Campaign: We developed and deployed an intensive 12-week social media and newsletter campaign conducted during July-September and December-March via Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and targeted newsletter distribution. This systematic approach generated consistent engagement with our target populations and created a steady pipeline of qualified program candidates. · Professional Print Collateral: We designed and produced specialized promotional materials--including informational cards, program flyers, and a professional pull-up banner--strategically distributed at key agricultural conferences such as the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (TOFGA) annual meeting, community events, and directly to consumers through the Hope Farms Market. · Content Marketing Strategy: We implemented a regular blog publishing schedule on our website highlighting student activities and successes, employing SEO best practices to ensure widespread exposure and improve organic discovery of our program offerings. · Strategic Media Relations: Our targeted press outreach yielded significant earned media coverage, including a prominent feature in Texas Monthly's November 2023 issue that showcased our program's unique approach to cultivating Gulf Coast urban farmers. Strategic Participant Support and Accessibility Initiatives To fulfill our commitment to developing a diverse, qualified cohort of urban farmers, we implemented several high-impact participant support strategies that directly addressed historical barriers to entry: · AmeriCorps Service Site Designation: We successfully established Hope Farms as a registered Serve Houston AmeriCorps service site--a significant achievement that enabled us to bring seven motivated individuals onboard to participate in the Growing Urban Farmers Program while receiving living stipends. This prestigious designation provides participants with both educational benefits and financial support, removing critical economic barriers that might otherwise prevent participation. · Targeted Scholarship Program: We strategically allocated resources to provide full scholarships to 25 BIPOC individuals for the comprehensive 12-week program and dozens more partial scholarships for specialized Master Classes. This initiative, coupled with our focused recruitment of BIPOC interns and AmeriCorps service members, resulted in a substantial increase in the number of BIPOC trainees who completed at least 24 hours of training in agricultural specialties. · Digital Learning Transition: We initiated the development of a sophisticated online curriculum for the Growing Urban Farmers 12-week program, beginning with high-quality video production and content codification. While the complete digital platform remains in development, we launched an immediate digital offering through our 12-hour Farm Business Master Class delivered via weekly webinars with complementary self-paced assignments--creating an accessible entry point for participants with scheduling constraints. · Strategic Community Partnerships: We established formal collaborations with complementary local food advocacy organizations to co-promote our Farmer Friday events, significantly expanding our reach and attracting greater participation from diverse segments of the agricultural community. These partnerships have strengthened the regional food system network while enhancing learning opportunities for our participants. Our targeted approach to participant support has yielded measurable improvements in program accessibility, completion rates, and post-program entrepreneurial success--directly fulfilling our USDA grant commitments to develop a more diverse and skilled urban farming workforce.
Publications
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Progress 09/15/22 to 09/14/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Having already developed powerful content and hands-on learning protocol designed to deliver critical knowledge to aspirational farmers in the Gulf Coast region, our first order of business was learning how to best communicate with a potential student population in our expanded market focus and implementing ongoing evaluation to guide us in making timely adjustments to better serve them. Taking on the systemic barriers that limit the entry and success of new farmers requires a multi-faceted approach, and we feel strongly that our newly minted farmers should be from or reflect the communities they serve, which is why we engaged the community in our Marketing and recruitment planning and efforts. With a goal to attract more black, indigenous, people of color and female participants into Hope Farms' Growing Urban Farmers program, we convened a focus group comprised of members of the community who shared cultural and economic traits with our target market. Using language developed together, we built and launched a multi-prong promotional campaign specifically for this effort to activated native, social and earned media efforts highlighting aspects of our training that set it apart from other opportunities in the space: hands-on learning combined with formal lectures specific to the Gulf Coast region; exposure to topic experts and local leaders in the industry spanning touchpoints from soil to customer; mentorships with seasoned farmers and regular "thought" gatherings of trainees, alum, ag educators, community leaders, master farmers and chefs. Audience Emphasis African American Hispanic or Latino Limited resource producers Military veterans Organic producers Small farms Specialty crop producers Urban producers Women Total Number of Participants: 96 Actual cumulative number of participants who as a result of your program: Started Farming: Target - 15,Actual - 20 Helped prepare to start farming: Target - 62,Actual - 52 Improved farming success: Target - 500,Actual - 54 Changes/Problems:RE GROWING URBAN FARMERS INTENSIVE CLASSES. We find that the biggest challenge to date of operating an intensive hands-on schedule for small groups of students is managing cultural clashes instigated by disruptive participants. Often this can happen behind the scenes and go unknown to instructors and proctors until tempers flare or bullies go too far. This can impact not only the sense of student well being and program satisfaction, it can impact knowledge retention and program participation by impacted students. Working with our evaluator and education professionals, we developed an anonymous monthly survey to measure program satisfaction which successfully surfaced these tensions and interactions in time for corrective measures. We determined that program directors and educators must be trained and empowered with Human Resource skills to most effectively manage these small, intensive groups using information gathered through these anonymous surveys. They must also be willing to expel students for poor group behavior. RE NEW TRADITIONS MASTER CLASSES. Our original Master Class design grouped together in depth content requiring 8-15 hours of hands-on training, which presented similar challenges for participation-either the 1-day classes were too long, or the multi-week schedules were difficult for students to commit to. We learned that it is important to craft smaller bites of content into shorter classes that can be taken on a Saturday morning or afternoon or a weekday evening to experience more robust registration and completion. RE NEW TRADITIONS ONLINE LEARNING PLATFORM While interviewing production companies to translate in-person learning content to online content, we surfaced a serious gap between the knowledge and goals of our education team and that of outsourced vendors. Learning that our project would require a contracted production company to hire and train a dedicated producer who would have to gain working knowledge of our content, which would drive up the cost and put us over budget. We determined that the better approach-which would work within our budget, would instead be a divided approach. We would hire a new Foundation staff member who is a professional content developer and production manager to work with a contracted video filming and edit crew. This should simplify the communication between our education team and the ultimate video producers and more seamlessly deliver the envisioned product. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?See Other Products section for a list of all trainings and professional development How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?To survive, new farms-both urban and rural, must be financially sustainable, which requires a working knowledge of location specific horticultural practices, solid business skills and a robust peer network. It is extremely expensive to learn on the job, and most new farming enterprises fail within three years. Advance training, continuous knowledge acquisition and a solid peer network is critical to success. Other than the obvious limitations of an aspirational or beginning farmers' available time and investment capital-particularly for members of the BIPOC community, women and veterans-a clear barrier to any new successful training effort is the ability of the program to equitably address the variability of experience, expectations, and goals that each brings. With the support of BFRDP-NIFA, we endeavor to increase the number of economically and environmentally sustainable urban farms operated by socially disadvantaged farmers in Houston and along the Gulf Coast by tackling issues of localized knowledge, available time, training expense, and access to professional and peer to peer support especially for members of the BIPOC community, women and veterans. We continue to maximize the reach of Growing Urban Farmers New Traditions and ensure its ultimate success by providing customizable platforms, extended learning and robust networking opportunities, and making business incubation support available in an integrated training program designed to support working and underserved students. Ultimately, students may choose the classes that best fit their needs, interests, and schedules, allowing them to leverage their basic training into even more profitable urban agriculture specialties and skills. We are offering sliding scholarships that waive up to 100% of the tuition for every iteration of our training. At the core of the program is our Growing Urban Farmers intensive training, a three-month, hands-on course involving students in the full range of day-to-day and strategic aspects that make a small urban working farm financially successful. To better fit students' work and family obligations, we recently adjusted the 12-week intensive to 20 hours a week, allowing participants to continue to hold a job or manage school-aged children. This has proven extremely popular with the Fall '23 cohort of students already three times the size of the Spring '23. In addition to the intensive, a series of New Traditions Master Classes offering advanced and specialty deep-dive short courses are held throughout the year and made more accessible to socially disadvantaged students with convenient scheduling, scholarships, and/or waived tuition and fees. We frequently hold these on Saturdays and evenings for the greatest convenience to our potential students. In our first year, we have conducted ten extended learning opportunities, attracting fifty students (some repeatedly). To further reduce participation barriers, we are working to design a sophisticated, easy to use online version of Hope Farms' Growing Urban Farmers New Tradition Intensive and Master Classes. We want to offer these classes using a mobile-friendly platform that is accessible anytime either online or via cellular service by both smartphone and computer. While we are deeply knowledgeable about direct content delivery, we had a steep learning curve about the fast-developing best practices for online learning. We convened an advisory board of professionals to guide our decision making and planning, which delayed the start, but we are confident that the final product will be far superior. To build the program, we have selected a Learndash plugin for our Hope Farms WordPress website. Our intention is to design a learner-centric course that not only achieves the desired knowledge outcome, but also provides an engaging experience. We have finalized selection of our camera crew and hired a professional content developer and production manager who will begin filming in the fall of 2023. Finally, having a mentor can change the playing field for a small business. Research has shown that small businesses that receive mentoring early in the development of the business achieve higher revenues and increased business growth. Farming businesses are no different. We are helping build social capital for our students by incubating a collegial, peer-to-peer network of urban farmers that will continue to exist and grow through Farmer Talks, a series of quarterly networking gatherings of trainees, alumni, ag educators, community leaders, master farmers and chefs who will share best practices and experiences with each other. These gatherings also serve as a platform for Extension Agents and others to provide continuing education. We hosted two large and eight smaller gatherings over the course of our first year, helping to build powerful connections among successful, beginning and aspirational farmers. In fact one alumni secured a job through this network. We built upon proven evaluation tactics using a third-party evaluation scientist to capture each trainee's previous knowledge of farming, degree of prior exposure to farming and the business of farming, and the overall effectiveness of the Growing Urban Farmers New Traditions training program. Upon application and after completion of training, each student completes a short survey assessing their agricultural and business exposure in addition to their self-efficacy of training on the farm. We conduct additional in-person interviews midway through training, at the completion of their program to assess knowledge retention. We conduct follow-up interviews at 6 months and 1 year after they complete their training to track their continued pursuit of farming as a meaningful full or part time career. The first cohort of students measured for this progress reflected an increase in horticultural knowledge and farming practices of 46.5%, achieving an average of 85% on knowledge testing. At the end of the Spring GUF Intensive, one half of them continued to pursue food growing and horticulture immediately after training and were still growing food at scale six-months after completion of training. Once online- only training opportunities become available in Year 3, we will adapt these methods to accommodate the volume and interface differences for online-only students. Incentives for feedback may be utilized, but the same milestones and analysis will be retained. All of these data were reviewed by Dr. Melissa Paschalis and are being submitted with this report. We plan to compile summary reports and make them available to the broader farming community upon request via links on our website. Personal identifying information in data files will be removed to minimize disclosure risk.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Having already developed powerful content and hands-on learning protocol designed to deliver critical knowledge to aspirational farmers in the Gulf Coast region, our first order of business was learning how to best communicate with a potential student population in our expanded market focus and implementing ongoing evaluation to guide us in making timely adjustments to better serve them. Taking on the systemic barriers that limit the entry and success of new farmers requires a multi-faceted approach, and we feel strongly that our newly minted farmers should be from or reflect the communities they serve, which is why we engaged the community in our Marketing and recruitment planning and efforts. With a goal to attract more black, indigenous, people of color and female participants into Hope Farms' Growing Urban Farmers program, we convened a focus group comprised of members of the community who shared cultural and economic traits with our target market. Using language developed together, we built and launched a multi-prong promotional campaign specifically for this effort to activated native, social and earned media efforts highlighting aspects of our training that set it apart from other opportunities in the space: hands-on learning combined with formal lectures specific to the Gulf Coast region; exposure to topic experts and local leaders in the industry spanning touchpoints from soil to customer; mentorships with seasoned farmers and regular "thought" gatherings of trainees, alum, ag educators, community leaders, master farmers and chefs. We recruited Dr. Melissa Paschalis, who has a particular sensibility about the health impacts of food systems and the importance of small-scale regenerative agriculture in the food chain, to design entry and exit evaluation tools to capture the base of knowledge possessed by new students along with their expectation of the content, impact of our training and vision for what they personally hoped to accomplish with it. She supplemented these benchmark data sets with monthly captures of student knowledge retention along with their self-efficacy of program content and delivery. This helped program designers and instructors make course correction decisions to achieve better outcomes for students. These data also helped us continue to tweak our recruitment and onboarding language to ensure student expectations align with program priorities and content. ? Increase awareness of farming as a viable career, especially in socially disadvantaged communities STEPS: 1. Conducted a broad based publicity campaign. 2. Hosted monthly Future Farmers Orientations to introduce opportunity to a total of 42 prospective students 3. Collaborated with 32 partner organizations to publicize farming as a career and Growing Urban Farmers as a pathway to successfully pursuing it. 4. Promoted climate positive impact of urban farming to mainstream press Increase the number of BIPOC trainees who complete at least 24 hours (2 classes) of training in Master Class topics STEPS: 1. Offered popular Master Class topics in a user-friendly schedule of shorter 1-day/evening tracks of less than 24 hours attracting 50 students as well as 3 who completed more in-depth programming. Beginning and new farmers (in their first 10 years of operation) participate in 1 + classes in New Traditions' Gulf Coast-focused online farmer training program STEPS 1. Hired production team for video production. 2. Selected a website builder compatible with our WordPress website platform and designed to deliver high quality content 3. Drafted structure of our online training site Formalize the network of support for beginning and new Gulf Coast urban farmers (quarterly Farmer Fridays) STEPS 1. Assembled a group of 34 professionals active in growing, distributing, preparing and selling agricultural products 2. Pivoted from Fridays to evenings -renames "Farmer Talks" and hosted two farmer gatherings to share best practices and provide networking opportunities. 3. took our trainees on six field trips to area food producers to build relationships and witness best practices. 4. took our trainees to two regional conferences to network with other farmers and learn best practices
Publications
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